A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building social networks or social relations among people (e.g., those who share interests and/or activities). A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
Social networking sites (e.g., Facebook®) present to a particular user the posts and stories by other users in a social networking feed or activity stream (may be referred to as a “news feed”). New postings or updates from friends and pages followed by the user (including photo tags, event updates, group memberships and other activity) will be reflected in the user's activity stream.
Currently, users are overwhelmed with postings or updates, and, as a result, may inadvertently miss a posting from a friend, especially infrequent posts from a friend. As a result, a period of time may elapse from the time when the user last communicated with his/her friend thereby possibly causing the relationship to be less “active” in the sense that there will be less communication between the two users.
Unfortunately, there is not currently a means for ensuring that relationships between users in a social network continue to be active relationships.